The party of desert-dwellers and their leader stood right outside of the gate's entrance into the city.

Just beyond the gate, the city of Namira gloriously emerged before the party. Before them stood a gigantic plaza that welcomed visitors and long-term residents alike and invited them to come deeper, complete with an ornate statue depicting the sultan that Althos knew as Mahmud in the prime of his life. The statue was a depiction of him not as a corpse, but as a warrior hefting a sword and wearing thick armor made of steel.

It also served the purpose of saying farewell to those leaving the city, reminding them of the artwork and culture they'd be trading for the fierce desert and all of its monstrous dangers.

Dozens of desert giants went about their lives in this plaza, some hard at work vending their wares, others doing their duty to protect the citizens of Namira, and yet many more were idly wandering around the plaza in search of cheap food or of their friends.

For perhaps the first time in its life Althos' second will saw more than just young adults or elders in this plaza, the god saw children and infants walking with their parents, playing with their friends, and some even wandered about by themselves. The second will saw them living carefree lives, at least momentarily forgetting their troubles and enjoying themselves. A part of it felt a pang of jealousy.

Each member of the party noticed that though the plaza was filled with enormous creatures, they heard very little coming from it. They could see the creatures beyond the gate walking around, and could see the lips on the creatures moving as if to indicate speech, but they had no idea where the speech came from.

The deceptive deity noticed that there was a thin wall made of magical energy that radiated in front of him, preventing him from doing more than seeing and faintly hearing those beyond the gate and inside of the plaza. It reached out and touched it, only to receive a surprising notification.

[Alert:

You have just touched a barrier. Barriers are walls of magical force and energy that protect locations and seal them off. You can see through this barrier easily enough but it mitigates what sort of other sensory information you receive from what's within it. And unless the attacks were as strong as you are and you could make them, any attacks that penetrated the barrier would be outright nullified.

The primary will has actually erected a barrier before, there's one around the expansive grounds of the dark cathedral that make it harder for anyone the will doesn't like to approach. It's a simple thing, inexpertly crafted, but thanks to the will's unlimited magical power the barrier could stay there forever

The specific barrier you touched is a particularly potent one that is powered by the strange tower you followed to get here. The tower is emitting tremendous amounts of energy to fuel the barrier it is surrounding the city with but whatever its source of magical power happens to be might just be... malfunctioning, as recently the barrier has begun to act up. Hence why you could see the tower in the distance to begin with. Normally it ought to be invisible to those outside of the gate.]

The disguised deity led his party out from just beyond the gate and into the proper plaza, though they clung close to him. The moment they stepped into the plaza itself and were out from the gate, they stepped through the translucent barrier the volume of what little they heard skyrocketed, and all of a sudden they could hear words, people, laughter, and more.

The angel awoke slowly. She wasn't helped by the fact that her prison-cell was devoid of any light, so even when she slowly opened her eyes no sunshine or moonlight flooded her retinas and jolted her brain in a fit of shock. Instead, she awoke on the cold floor of a place as dark as the deepest underground pit.

When she was fully awake, her non-sight senses began to grant her a faint awareness of her conditions. Drat... I woke up and I'm still here. She told herself, annoyed by that development. It's not a dream... not a nightmare, after all. She realized, sighing quietly.

Her cell stretched out before her for several meters. The thing was quite wide. What it wasn't, was tall. Which shouldn't have mattered, but for the problem her wings posed. Whether folded against her back, or bunched together to decrease their horizontal length, her dark-feathered wings scrapped against the low-ceiling, a ceiling she nearly bumped her head against whenever she had dared to try and stand while speaking to her devilish captors yesterday, following her capture.

Within a few minutes of looking around her blank cell, she challenged herself to try and assess her situation as thoroughly as possible. Come on... come on. Give me anything. Nothing should be overlooked. She told herself, pushing her other senses to make up for the lack of both light and features in her cell.

In time she became aware of things. Above her, she heard the sound of footsteps, but not the footfalls of a flatfooted humanoid. The sounds she heard were the sounds of hooves on metal.

Her nose twitched as she took deep whiffs of the air around her. She was shocked to find that she didn't feel assailed by vicious scents or disgusted by the stench of offal in the air, instead what she found was that her cell didn't smell vile at all. Rather than smelling terrible, the place smelled bland and unlived in.

When she got up and began to walk around again, opting to spread her wings out far so that they didn't hit the low-hanging ceiling, she found that she was barefoot. This surprised her because she hadn't noticed it. Ugh. She thought to herself. Do I have my other pieces of armor? She asked herself, hesitantly, before checking by both looking down at herself and patting her body.

Oh good. If I lost my armor, Klaus would be super upset. She thought, upon realizing that her thin breastplate was still on and she still had her fur pants and grieves.

After a few minutes of pointlessly looking around, unsure of what to do, she did what she sometimes did when she was stressed. She got on her knees, brought her hands together, and prayed.

The plaza was alive with a sort of vibrancy that Althos' second will had never experienced before. Even the god's main will had only ever experienced the sort of intense life the city of Namira's grand plaza exuded only once when he entered the marketplace of the city of Undermoon.

The plaza was home to a variety of smells, scents that neither of the god's wills had ever smelled before. A breeze gently drifted by the deity and delivered with it the scents of roasted scorpion, of camel meat, of giant sweat, of blood, and of a hundred other things its godly sense of smell eagerly identified. The desert-giant smiled, his grin lopsided and crooked like many of the other desert giants that dwelled in the city.

Althos turned and faced his friends. And he spoke to them. "Are you all ready to go?" He asked, gently. They looked around the plaza, a bit dismayed at how much larger everything was than they were, only truly noticing now that they were inside the city itself and not outside of its gigantic wall, before collecting themselves and nodding at the desert-giant. Althos grinned and turned around so that he could lead them through the metropolis.

Only Althos noticed the surprisingly sneaky human who peered at the party from across the plaza. There were too many sights, sounds, and scents for anyone with lesser senses than his own to make out a face, even one that happened to be the wrong size in a city of giants, so Althos didn't blame his servants and instead focused on the fresh-faced fellow who only had eyes for the parent.

The fellow was a young lad, a young man coming into his own, in the strange desert giant city of Namira. Althos kept his gaze on the lad, as the lad sized up the giant's companions, his own sandy brown eyes carefully assessing the warrior-woman and the skittish blonde youth who traveled alongside their giant companion.

Althos spoke freely, his eyes lingering on the human but also doing his best to be cognizant of the needs of his followers. "Would you all like to go and get some food?" He asked them, a question which was met with cheers from the adventurers.

Now if only I knew how to get some money... The god thought to himself, happy that he had energized his followers, and hoping that a chance would fall onto his lap soon. And it would. Though not his lap.

Althos' second body spent the next two hours discussing the specifics of his theoretical faith with the pious-devils before excusing himself. A few of the questions the devils asked him were truly remarkable.

One of the nuns asked him about sacrifice. He had been asked something similar by the orc Ranthor, his first orcish worshiper and the woman, the nun named Nuno, who was asking him about sacrifice now had a similarly zealous aura surrounding her.

"Master, when we prepare our monthly sacrifices to you... what would you most be pleased by?" She asked, meekly wondering how she could most please the first devil who could promote devils she had met in millennia. Her voice was meek but she herself was a tall woman, standing nearly four meters tall when she wasn't slouching.

Althos looked at her and pondered her question for a bit. He thought about it with a surprising amount of consideration before finally deciding on an answer. "If something must be sacrificed to me, let it be knowledge. If there are pious people who seek to solicit my aid, or who wish to honor me in their own way, I'd like for them to offer me wisdom." He said softly.

She smiled at him and nodded sagely at his words, apparently pleased with his response.

Another particularly savvy question allowed Althos to demonstrate one of the things that made him happy. This question was asked by a priest, the priest named Arodon, had asked him about holidays, days they, as members of the church, were to celebrate. Off the top of his head, Althos could imagine one such day.

The first was the day Narcolept was defeated. Six days ago. Althos suggested calling it "The Day Of The Titan's Pain." Which was in his mind anyway, a neat title for the festival, but his followers cringed when he said it. Althos agreed to try and come up with a better name and was excited when the devil's expressed their approval of the idea itself.

I can workshop the name, but I'm glad that they like the idea itself. It's proof that I have some basic grasp of what to do here. He thought, grinning all the while.

"What would we do during it?" One of the priests asked. Althos looked at him and responded.

"We would celebrate the downfall of the creature who ate the first people who'd join our rebellion against Paimon. That titan ate you all. I want to remember it by dancing to the thought of its death." The deity-devil explained quite simply. This response surprised his servants, but they quickly reacted to it by beginning to laugh. They found themselves liking Althos more by the minute.

By the time two hours had passed Althos didn't feel like he had had intense theological discussions, he felt instead like he was beginning something new and remarkable. Something he hoped would result in him gaining more power. But there was something the deity knew for sure would result in him gaining more power, and he was eager to try it, to experiment with it.

Althos looked out before him and saw a gathering of devils. He saw a cabal with sinister powers and deadly motivation. And he saw a force of warriors who were ready to obey him. But he wasn't strong enough yet. I have to get stronger. And one way to do that is to master my own powers. He thought, recognizing his own current weakness relative to his potential, to the potential of the powers within his soul.

"Friends! Compatriots! Coconspirators! Lend your ears." He said, disrupting the jovial atmosphere of the gathering in the sinister chapel. The sabbath of devils turned to their new leader, looking at him with abject interest in their sulfurous eyes.

"I invite you all to stay here as long as you wish, but I want you to know that I am going to go hone my powers for the battles to come. I believe that my current strength is insufficient and I know of ways to improve my powers. In the meantime, I invite my pious friends to go forth and tell our allies of the way of me." His last sentence got a dry chuckle from some of the assembled devils, and then Althos began the walk down the middle of the chapel. As he did so he messaged two of the creatures in the chapel. Tristan and Nefarious.

[Hello you two. I hope all is well.] He said, greeting the two of them eagerly. They turned to watch him leave as one, having been seated in a corner and chatting about Nefarious' attempt to conquer Agowraith's tomb, and about what Nefarious missed in the half a century since his defeat.

[Hello Althos. I'd say we are doing fine. Is there a reason you needed us? Do you wish for us to accompany you?] Nefarious asked, sending the message in such a way that both Althos and Tristan could hear it, while revealing his respectful curiosity as to his savior's intentions. Althos grinned but didn't turn around as he read the moth devil's message.

[No. I just wanted to check in with the two of you. Tristan's had... a long week no doubt, so sooner or later I will be borrowing your daughter to see how she's doing. But for now I just wanted to hear from you. Both of you.] Althos told Nefarious, looping in Tristan as well. He turned around for a moment and smiled at her.

[I'm doing... my best. It's a lot to take in you know? A week ago we didn't know each other. You had only just started existing. And now my father's killer is dead, and my father is alive again. Because of you and your magic. To say that meeting you turned my life around... is no exaggeration.] She told him, sincerely. She looked at his back as he exited the chapel and sent him one more message. [Thank you Althos.] She told him, all while wondering where he was going.

Althos left the chapel, spread his dark wings, and took off into the desert. He wanted to be alone while he did what he was about to do. While he experimented with souls.

Once he was in the air, he spotted a distant patch of sand. And he took off in its direction.

The secondary will discovered the class of the golden-furred jackaloid almost entirely by accident. And it all happened because the cowardly jackaloid was hungry, and remembered that Althos had no money in the wake of his declaration that it was time they went out and got food. It turned out that hunger could make cowards brave, for a moment anyway.

The party hadn't gotten far into Namira's grand palace when the incident happened. Althos, the scorpion, and the red-headed warrior woman, a jackaloid named Camilla, had been focused on the statue and the three of them had been staring at it openly.

That was a common reaction to the statue, and it was the point of the whole thing. It was supposed to invoke awe. But the golden-furred jackaloid wasn't so easily distracted, at least not when his stomach was rumbling. He was looking at something else. Someone else.

The golden-furred jackaloid's eyes were trailing one of the young desert giants who was playing with his friends. The youth was small enough that he was only 3 meters tall instead of 5 like Althos.

The lad wore a loose-fitting outfit designed to allow the heat to not affect his ability to go out and play. The outfit not only had pockets that gave off a delightful sound; the sound of loose coins, the lad also had a thin coin-purse swinging loosely from his waist. And for the golden-furred jackaloid, a young thief named Kuzco, that made him an excellent target.

Kuzco stepped out of the darkness of Althos' shadow and began to stealthy approach the boy. He was chatting with a friend and distracted, all of which naturally suited Kuzco. The young jackaloid channeled his fear and used it to approach at a calm pace, while also making himself small and harder to detect even as he approached the boy. Kuzco had crossed over half of the distance from where he started and where the boy was before Althos truly noticed that he had left the group.

The young god looked to his left and saw the thin human-form of Kuzco strolling across the plaza alone. Oh? What's this... The will wondered for a moment until he too noticed the tiny desert-giant that was chatting with one of his little companions. This is going to be trouble? Or is it the birth of something new? He questioned, as Kuzco continued his approach.

The jackaloid's movements sped up as he approached the youthful giant. Kuzco's body language didn't change so anyone who wasn't watching him wouldn't notice the increase in speed, but he moved considerably faster as he closed the distance between himself and his target. I just want to do this swiftly. Kuzco told himself, as he felt his heartbeat begin to hammer in his chest.

And then Kuzco was within range of his objective. He was directly behind the lad, and all he had to do was reach out and grab the coin-purse. All it takes is one move. He told himself, attempting to muster the courage to reach out and snatch what was in front of him. And then, steeling himself for whatever came next, he reached out towards the coin-purse.

The moment of fate, as it often happened, was over in an instant. The jackaloid's hands were a blur, even to Althos, as he slipped his fingers into the coin-purse and dug out the change within them.

Though Kuzco's heart was hammering in his chest, the giant was distracted and his friend who would have noticed Kuzco was engrossed in their juvenile conversation, so the jackaloid successfully snatched the coinage from the unaware giant with just a few seconds of rummaging around his coin-purse.

And when the jackaloid began to stroll back towards his friends, he received an unexpected notification.

[Alert!

Your successful theft, despite your hammering heart, is deemed worthy of naming you a thief. Thieves are one of the specialties available to the rogue class. Thieves are skilled at detecting traps, at sneaking around in battle, and at stealing enemy valuables. Congratulations! You did good little one.]